Human Rights

In the thread A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives ...by Michael Moore
Michael Moore makes a pledge from liberals to conservatives (of which I am neither): My reply to that was

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Does this mean they won't stick up for my unborn child should someone intend to do harm to him/her/it. Or is it just trash?

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Then everyone started getting concerned that I was not concerned about the rights of a woman. My reply to that was:

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I never said the woman doesn't have any rights, she has every right in the world not to have intercourse. Unless she is raped against her will, then she should have the right to remove the baby, IMO.

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Chiroptera responds So I asked her why that is a right.Being that birth control is not 100% full proof, or natural, I can't see how this is a right for two consenting adults. The same goes for the man, as he is part of it, and can be an influence on the woman’s decision to get an abortion. (of which I am guilty of).When I think of human rights, this is what I think of:
Human RightsAs I read that, I really don't see anything that could be applied to what is claimed by chiroptera and others.The obvious answer is because you can get an abortion, that makes it a right. But there was a time when you couldn't, and they are fighting to remove that option. So I will not accept that answer. It doesn't fully describe why it is a right. A starving child has a right to food. The child has done nothing to put himself in harms way.If a woman gets raped, then I feel she has a right to an abortion.But the combination of the two events, consensual intercourse, and abortion together, I feel is just not a right, and I would like to hear arguments as to why it is.In this thread we are not going to talk about abortion. Abortion is legal. I also don't want to talk about when life begins in the womb. Those two subjects have been beaten to death already.So this is the question, and the topic,
Why is it a right for both a man and a woman to have consensual sex, AND get an abortion?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Ultimately the life of the unborn child depends on the choices the mother makes. If she does not want to be pregnant, then she can insure the death of her unborn child. So, basically, it is her choice.Whether or not that is morally wrong, I don't think is the discussion here.What I don't get for this thread is the whole human rights thing.Do you want an argument for abortion being a human right?From above, to me it seems that before we define the rights and whether or not abortion is in there, that the life of the unborn child depends on the choices the mother makes, so it kinda looks like a right by default.

Nobody has a right to demand tenancy inside of another human being against their will, just as you don't have a right to live inside someone else's private property if they don't want you to.It doesn't matter how you got in in the first place. If I invite you over to my house for pizza, I can still demand that you leave. Just because I invited you over for the night doesn't mean you get to stay for months. It doesn't matter if you don't have any other place to go. No, actually, he or she doesn't. Just because you believe you have need of something I have, doesn't mean you get to take it from me against my will. I might be a bad person for witholding food from a starving person, but if they put me in an armlock and take it from me, they're still a thief.There's a reason that we can't simply go around abducting people and harvesting their organs to help those who need them. People have soverignty over their own bodies. It's the second most fundamental right. Another's need does not produce a legal obligation on anybody else. Why is it a right for both a man and a woman to eat a hamburger, AND drink a diet soda? The reason people have a right to consent to intercourse, and withhold consent to being pregnant, is the same reason they have the right to do anything else.

What if kicking them out of your house ensues their death?

Too bad for them. Not my problem.

That's mean.

No question. But it's meaner still to tell people they have to have unwanted roommates, or a forced birth, just because somebody believes they need to do that.It basically comes down to whether or not life is more important than freedom. Of course, everybody dies eventually.

Which is less mean than kicking someone out who you invited over knowing that when they leave they'll die.

Only if you think freedom and self-determination are valueless.

It doesn't neccessarily make freedom valueless but you got me on the self-determination.

Riverrat:You cannot have the right to not have intercourse unless you also have the right to intercourse. If you have the to intercourse then you have the right not to have intercourse. Take away one and the other is no longer a right. Neither are seat belts. Just because you do not have the ability to understand does not make your belief override the rights of consenting adults. See consenting adults except the responsibility for what they do, and if terminating an unplanned pregnancy is the decision, then you need to live with it. You must have overlooked this part

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Article 12.

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No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attack

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Kind of defeats your stance by using this.Edited by alacrity fitzhugh, : No reason given.

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Look to this day, For yesterday is already a dream. And tomorrow only a vision. But today We lived, makes every Yesterday a dream of Happiness and every tomorrow A vision of hope. Look well there to This day.

Who owns the womb, rat?The woman or the zygote/fetus?

Riverrat, in my former life I was a very religious person. The transition to atheism for me left many moral issues dangling. I struggled with some of these issues for a long time.For example, in my former life I believed that sex was evil. I'm a liberal now and I now believe that it's really none of my bussiness about other people's sex lives. However, in the back of my mind sex still carries a kind of negative stigma. You could say it's a conflict between my former and current selfs. I'm probably the only man I know that actually tries to avoid sex with his wife.But at the same time, I cannot deny the fact that just about everyone else I know don't have the same personal view about sex. Most other people I know and know of enjoy sex and would like to have sex as often as possible. I don't see that much of a beauty in sex, but I respect people's opinion and so I don't try to regulate their sexual behaviors. I do, however, encourage people to practice safe sex.But suppose that at the spur of the moment a couple of people decided not to have safe sex and ended up with an unwanted pregnancy. Or perhaps they did practice safe sex and they happened to be part of the few that got unlucky. Should the woman be allowed to discontinue an unwanted pregnancy?I struggled with this question ever since I converted to atheism. My current position isn't clear, even to myself. But consider the following scenario for the moment.Suppose one day I drive a car down the street. I've been described by my friends as driving like a grandmother, so you can imagine how careful I am when on the road. Suppose at the spur of the moment I decide to go over the speed limit and WHAM! I hit a pedestrian.Because of me, this person loses most of his organs and in need of new organs. Unfortunately for him, there ain't no organs for him for 9 months (takes them nine months to artificially create organs for him star trek style). And by the stroke of improbable luck, I'm the only person in the world that's compatible to him. So, I could either volunteer to allow them to plug me up with him for 9 months or let him die. I decide to let him use my organs.Four months later, I become a self-hating, suicidal son-of-a-bitch who doesn't like to share his organs. I want to disconnect myself from this bed-ridden guy and, as a side affect, let him die.There was no written contract when this whole thing started, so I feel that I have no obligation to continue to share my organs with this guy. It was, after all, an accident that I ran him over with my car.The question is should society have the right to force me to continue to share my organs with this person against my will? Or, have I lost my right to complete control over my organs at the moment I accidently ran over him?By the way, for the record, I still consider the goo of cells (aka embryo, fetus, etc.) to be a human being. I guess it's part of my former self I haven't been able to get rid of...

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Place yourself on the map at http://www.frappr.com/evc

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The thread about this map can be found here.

What about the man?